Coordinating team
Michelle Plascencia Esparza, Mexico City
Michelle is a cultural organizer with experience in film festival production and an impact producer based in Mexico City. She led the first edition of the Good Pitch program in México 2020, as the Outreach and Partnerships Coordinator at DocsMX, a documentary film platform in Mexico City. Regional field building has established positive and productive relationships amongst filmmakers and organizers, which she aims to continue to support through workshops, forums, and film programming to recognize the power of thoughtful, ethical and fundamental storytelling processes as the social change ecosystem continues to grow in Mexico. She is also part of Impacta Cine, the first film & social impact collective in Mexico directed to work alongside filmmakers to design and implement impact campaigns. She is currently leading the second edition of Good Pitch México in October 2022.
michelle [at] docsociety.org
Miriam Ayoo – Nairobi, Kenya
Miriam is an impact strategist and cultural producer based in Nairobi, Kenya. At the heart of her work is a commitment to centering and amplifying under-represented stories and voices. She has nearly a decade’s experience working at the intersection of art and activism, designing and implementing programs and outreach initiatives within a range of social impact areas and artistic mediums. In addition to serving as a co-coordinator for GIPA, she is currently the impact strategist/producer for award winning films including Softie, Los Hermanos/The Brothers, and No Simple Way Home. Miriam holds a dual master’s degree in public policy (Mundus MAPP) from the International Institute of Social Studies in The Hague, Netherlands and the Institut Barcelona d’Estudis Internacionals in Barcelona, Spain. Moonlighting as a singer-songwriter, in her free time, you can find her writing her next hit song or singing Whitney Houston at the best karaoke spots in town.
Miriam [at] docsociety.org
Naomi Walker – Richmond, VA, USA
Naomi recently served as Executive Director of Southern Documentary Fund (2016 – 2019).
Naomi has worked with ITVS as National Engagement Consultant (2006 – 2016), Outreach Director for Good Pitch New York 2016 and Good Pitch Chicago 2015. Naomi has advised various documentaries on engagement strategy. As Education Director for Cinema/Chicago, she created classroom materials and discussion guides for films and established an annual media literacy retreat for educators, highlighting ways to use moving image media in the classroom. Naomi created the course Engagement Strategies for the Documentary at The Michael Rabiger Center for Documentary at Columbia College.
Previous Projects include: consulting, classroom materials and discussion guides: Louder Than A Bomb, Deaf Jam, Prisoner of Her Past.
@NaomiDoc
Naomi [at] docsociety.org
Advisory committee
Farah Fayed – Lebanon
Film Festivals / Film support programs
With a background in television, Farah holds a B.A in audiovisuel studies. Her 8 years in television were equally split between entertainment and news channels.
In 2012, Farah shifted her career into the film festivals’ industry and worked with the Dubai International Film Festival for its last 6 editions managing their Cinetech, a digital library for the sales and acquisitions of films.
Farah also worked with the Malmo Arab Film Festival, moderating its film market’s pitching sessions.
In 2019, Farah joined the team of Beirut DC, the association for Development and Cinema where she is currently the director of programs with a special attention to the impact program. Beirut DC’s impact program includes regional and local impact labs, an Impact Fund and the Impact Producers’ Fellowship among other intersectional programing.
Contact:
farahfayed@beirutdc.org
ffayed@gmail.com
http://beirutdc.org
Kara Magsanoc-Alikpala – Philippines
Broadcast journalist and filmmaker.
Kara Magsanoc-Alikpala co-founded the film production company Storytellers International Inc. and is the President of Filipino Documentary Society (FilDocs). She recently produced “Delikado,” a documentary on land defenders and illegal logging in the Philippines. It premiered at Hot Docs in May 2022, and at the LA Asian Pacific Film Festival. It will also screen at the CAAMFest, New York’s Human Rights Watch Film Festival, Doc Edge and at the Sheffield Doc Fest. Kara was one of the producers of “Call Her Ganda,” (Call Her Beautiful) that premiered at the Tribeca Film Festival and Hot Docs in 2018. It won the Grand Jury prize at the Los Angeles Pacific Film Festival, over a dozen Best Documentary Audience Awards and was broadcast on POV/PBS. The film was nominated for a GLAAD Media Award. She has produced award-winning television specials and documentaries like “Batas Militar” (Martial Law). To date, it has been the highest rated documentary broadcast on Philippine Television. The documentary swept all major awards in the Philippines. It was a finalist at the International Documentary Festival in Amsterdam (IDFA), and a bronze medalist at the New York Festival. After over 21 years since it premiered, “”Batas Militar” continues to be screened and discussed in public forums, in schools, and universities. Kara is based in Manila, Philippines. She is a contributing producer for ARD German TV, ARD German Radio, Cable News Network (CNN) Hong Kong and Atlanta bureaus. She is a member of the Good Pitch2 Southeast Asia Team in Jakarta. She has produced documentaries for the History Channel, and the Australian Broadcasting Company. She has reported for the Public Broadcasting Service and Voice of America.
Khadidja Benouataf – France / French Polynesia
Impact Strategist & Impact field builder
Coming from a background of journalism, Khadidja is vice-president of the IMPACT SOCIAL CLUB, the Think Tank of impact in France, and impact strategist at BIM – Best Impact Movies.
She trains film industry professionals and students in impact strategies in France and internationally (Dixit – Le film français, FOCAL, MIGROS STORYLAB, International Media Foundation, Filmakademie Baden-Württemberg, École W-Paris-Panthéon-Assas/CFJ), acts as a panellist and supervises impact labs in international film festivals (FIPADOC, FIFDH, DOK LEIPZIG, MOVIES THAT MATTER). In 2021 she joined the pool of mentors of the Pour-cent Culturel Migros Story Lab (Switzerland).
She has designed the impact campaigns for several award-winning documentaries: The Zimov Hypothesis by Denis Sneguirev (Arturo Mio,13 Productions, Arte), Le Dernier Refuge – The Last Shelter by Ousmane Samassekou (DS productions, Les Films du Balibari Point du Jour, Génération Afrique, Arte), the French campaign of Shadow Game by Eefje Blankevoort & Els Van Driel (Witfilm, KRO-NCRV, Prospector)…
Khadidja is also coordinator of the FIFO Tahiti overseas program at the International Oceanian Documentary Film Festival. In 2019, FIFO Tahiti hosted the first Good Pitch Impact Lab in France.
SINI HORMIO – FINLAND
Sini Hormio is a Helsinki-based filmmaker and impact producer with over two decades in the film and television industry. She has led impact production for documentaries like “Just Animals” and “Neurotypes”. Her feature documentary “The Kind Stranger”, co-directed with Anu Silfverberg, premiered at DocNYC in 2023. Currently, Hormio is the Head of Industry & Impact at the DocPoint Helsinki Film Festival and is studying corporate responsibility at Hanken School of Economics.
Carol Misorelli – Brazil
Carol is from São Paulo, Brazil, 43 years old, and a mother. In 2014, she co-founded Taturana Institute (www.taturana.org), a Brazilian nonprofit organization dedicated to strengthening the fields of cinema and social impact in Latin America. Taturana devises impactful film campaigns, facilitates community screenings, and provides training in the field. Since 2022, she has been deeply involved in research and facilitation at IRIS (storyforimpact.io), where she leads virtual meetings discussing narrative change among Latin American and Caribbean organizations, and conducted research on the narrative change ecosystem in the region. Before 2022, she worked as a consultant, researcher, and facilitator for Brazilian nonprofit organizations, focusing specifically on strategic planning and evaluation. She holds a master’s degree in Visual Anthropology from the Free University of Berlin, as well as degrees in Business Administration from the University of São Paulo and International Relations from PUC São Paulo.
Florencia Varela – United States
Florencia’s (she/her) work lies at the intersection of learning, social impact, and film. She currently leads Peace is Loud’s learning and filmmaker outreach initiatives, mainly through the organization’s signature program Collective Lens. She previously has worked on impact campaigns for films such as To the End, On the Divide, Knock Down the House, Women War & Peace II, The Bleeding Edge, and The Hunting Ground. In her current role, Florencia seeks to center filmmakers who are currently underrepresented in the industry, and offer spaces to share knowledge, redistribute power, and build community. Previous to Peace is Loud, Florencia honed her partnerships, outreach, and development skills over more than a decade at organizations such as PEN America, the Rubin Museum of Art, the Poetry Society of America, and Nitehawk Cinema, where she launched the cinema’s partnerships and sponsorships program. Florencia is also on the board of The Future of Film is Female, is a published poet, and was born and raised in Buenos Aires, Argentina.
